Roach/Development
200px|thumb|Roach concept art Roaches previously attacked air units but that ability was removed from the game pre-retail release. As of May 2008, due to a bug roaches were not affected by the Dark Swarm's secondary ability of preventing units inside it from firing.Karune. 2008-05-23. Nevermind, roaches will be able to shoot under Dark Swarm (current, being a bug). Dark Swarm related. Battle.net StarCraft II General Discussion Forum. Accessed 2008-05-23. Dark Swarm was later removed from the game by October of that year.Zetaras Xal'Kurat. 2008-10-17. BlizzCon 2008: Changes to StarCraft 2. SC2 Blog. Accessed 2008-10-17. Artistically, the physique of the roach was very similar to the lurker, leading the design team to push the lurker in a different direction so the current roach design could be retained. Originally, brown was its dominant color, but this was later changed to black.2010, Starcraft 2: Zerg Roach. Deviantart, accessed on 2011-07-20 The roach was originally a melee attacker when it was first revealed in March 2008Zetaras Xal'Kurat. 2008-03-11. Blizzard’s Rush: 36 Hours of Zerg. SC2 Blog. Accessed 2011-09-03. though it was later redesigned to be a ranged attacker, making the scything blades nearly useless aside from visual flamboyance. Its melee animation can still be seen when a roach is targeting a unit within melee range. Regeneration In April 2008 the roach regenerated at 15 HP per secondKarune. 2008-04-24. StarCraft II Q&A Batch 36: ScreenCraft. Battle.net StarCraft II General Discussion Forums. Accessed 2008-04-24. (25 hp/second with Organic Carapace).StarCraft Legacy staff. 2008-06-29. WWI 08 Coverage - Zerg & Protoss Upgrades. StarCraft Legacy. Accessed 2008-09-01. A roach could heal fast enough to retain approximately 50% of its hit points if hit by a psi storm, and over 80% of its hit points after its regeneration has been upgraded.Karune. 2008-05-15. StarCraft II Q&A - Batch 38. Battle.net StarCraft II General Discussion Forums. Accessed on 2008-05-15. The roach's regeneration rate appears to have slowed as of April 2009.Dustin Browder, Robert Simpson, Matt Cooper, David Kim. 2008-12-19. Battle Report (2). Blizzard Entertainment. Accessed 2009-04-16. Blizzard removed the above-ground regeneration ability, as they felt it was too "random"; roaches could win or lose battles depending on how they were randomly targeted when opposing units attack-moved against them.Dustin Browder, Adam Biessener. 2010-04-08. An Extensive Interview With StarCraft II's Design Director (page 4). Game Informer. Accessed 2010-04-09. In June 2010, the Organic Carapace upgrade was removed. Heart of the Swarm Under the old mutagen system, roaches had the following available upgrades and evolution options in Heart of the Swarm: Legacy of the Void During the Legacy of the Void beta, the roach burrow and tunneling claws upgrades were made standard. These was reverted to upgrade status.Blizzard Entertainment. 2015-05-21. Legacy of the Void Beta: Balance Update Preview - May 21. Blizzard Entertainment. Accessed 2015-05-22. The ability to move while burrowed was temporarily removed.2015-03-31, StarCraft II Legacy of the Void Beta Release Patch Notes. Blizzard Entertainment, accessed on 2015-04-03 The roach also gained the ability to mutate into a ravager, a specialist artillery unit.Blizzard Entertainment. 2015-03-18. Legacy of the Void Beta Preview. Blizzard Entertainment. Accessed 2015-03-18. References Category: StarCraft II development